Online learning environments offer new opportunities for learning and over the last decade or so a variety of online learning environments have been developed by researchers to facilitate collaborative learning among students. In this paper we will present a case study of a successful collaborative learning design. This involves a near synchronous…

This article presents the results of a study that investigated readers' perceptions of tone formality in online text passages. The study found that readers perceived text passages to be less formal when they contained personal pronouns, active voice verbs, informal punctuation, or verb contractions. The study reveals that professional…

Ascertaining levels of media competence (development in the field of media culture) of students is based on the classification of indicators developed by the author. In accordance with this classification, audience is invited to a basic blocks of questions and tasks. The targets are: to detect the levels of motivational indicators of audience's…

News reports (e.g., Abrams, 2008) and scholarly research (e.g., Wiersma & Fifer, 2005) have indicated increasing concern that parent-spectator behavior at youth sport events may be problematic. Multiple strategies have been used to influence spectator behavior in youth sport contexts (e.g., "Silent Sundays"). However, it is unlikely that…

Millennials, those individuals born between 1980 and 2000, compose the largest cohort of college students in the United States. Stereotypical views of millennials characterize them as technologically sophisticated multitaskers, capable of significant contributions to tomorrow's organizations, yet deficient in communication skills. This article…

The author discusses the shift from criticism-as-explanation to criticism-as-performance that has taken place in literary criticism over the past five decades, and the resultant surge in published offerings to what has become a diminishing audience. The question of supersaturation applies to the institutions that demand and reward humanities…

In this paper I seek to inquire upon audience's perceptions of creativity in online advertising--a heretofore poorly understood area. This paper initially outlines current academic understanding of creativity in online advertising, mainly derived from quantitative assessments. It then advances a qualitative methodology including diary-interviews…

In her influential 1988 essay, "Fighting Words," Jane Tompkins argued that the arguments typically made by literary critics are characterized by an aggressive competitiveness that amounts to violence. But, as Tompkins's own rhetorical strategies demonstrate, at least as deplorable are the practices whereby critics render certain people anonymous.…

Teacher education should incorporate management and leadership training with an emphasis on student audience analysis. Macro perspectives of teaching are needed for a workable approach to the management of education.

In the academic world, citations can provide insights into the impact of a particular theoretical orientation on scholarship in a field of study, showing epistemological shifts as numbers of citations to that theory increase or diminish. This study explored the impact of the transactional theory of reading, articulated by Louise Rosenblatt, (e.g.,…

Anticipating a substantially larger voter turnout in the upcoming election, district officials needed to probe--more precisely than in past tax elections--exactly what demographic groups would most likely go to the polls and support the tax proposal. Message testing and voter targeting became critical components in building a foundation for…

In 1898, students at the University of Toronto founded "Torontonensis", the university's first yearbook. Fashioned as a remembrance of university, from its inception the yearbook was fraught with conflict and contestation particularly around how male students were represented and how their college experiences were made, and not made,…

Students are experts at sizing up instructors, but many do not extend this analysis to non-instructor audiences, which can reduce their effectiveness in new communication situations. Audience, therefore, is a crucial threshold concept not only in Rhetoric and Composition, but in any discipline that values communication skills. How can instructors…

This study examines participants' responses to first year students' street performances as a non-placement work-integrated learning (WIL) activity over a two year period. The purpose of the study was to determine: (1) community perception, (2) continuous improvement, and (3) future needs. Data was collected through surveying participants'…

A significant problem for practitioners of technical communication is to gain the skills to compete in a global, multicultural work environment. Instructors of technical communication can provide future practitioners with the tools to compete and excel in this global environment by introducing heuristics of cultural dimensions into the…